NOORULDEEN AGHA

Founder and Chief Executive Officer of standout fashion e-commerce company elabelz.com Nooruldeen Agha, began his professional career after graduating from the American University of Sharjah with a Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering and Computer Science. He began in his native Iraq as a software engineer for major oil company Baker Hughes, it was not long before Agha wanted to venture out on his own and forge his own path. Returning to the UAE in 2013, he co-founded Elephant Nation, a branding and digital advertising agency, with his wife Rand Al Maeeni, and started assembling a team. The company grew steadily and worked with over 100 prestigious clients including the Government of Dubai, Emaar Properties, and DP World.

Just two years after it established, Elephant Nation had a stable client base and was operating smoothly. Agha decided it was time for his next professional step, this time into a relatively new market for the MENA region, e-commerce. Through his experience at Elephant Nation, Agha realised that the popularity of e-commerce was exploding across the world and it would just be a matter of time before the Middle East followed suit. Identifying the strong fashion oriented culture in the region as an investment he could capitalise on. As opposed to the highly competitive electronics market, fashion offered the profit margins a start-up on this scale required to succeed. He decided to hone in on retro and customizable fashion targeted towards the region, and in June 2015 CreoRoom was born.

Just six months later, he set about establishing what he would later call “an Amazon for trendy fashion buyers,” with his wife Rand Al Maeeni taking over control of Elephant Nation, enabling Agha to concentrate fully on his new company. His second fashion venture, Elabelz, this time focusing on mid-scale and luxury fashion, launched in January of 2016, and with Agha at the helm has gone from strength-to-strength. Elabelz began to build momentum and within twelve months the company expanded from 18 employees to over 170, across various departments that cover operations, sourcing, technology and development, photography and marketing.

Agha decided that as an e-commerce company the user experience was the key to the company’s long-term success. Initially this meant acquiring the right team who not only knew their roles intimately, but subscribed to the Agha’s vision for Elabelz. Once established the Elabelz team refined the customer experience to a point where there are now more than 30,000 products available for same-day or next day delivery on the site and across their mobile applications available on Android and iOS, with 250 new styles added daily.
In the almost two years since it was established, Elabelz has seen exceptional and sustained growth, which Agha attributes to a number of factors, not least of which is the availability of talent in Dubai, which allowed the company to expand beyond the UAE into new markets like Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait and most recently Iraq.

Challenged with an undeveloped market in his native country, Agha re-engineered the process that was required for Elabelz to continue to provide the same high-quality products and services. This involved building an on-the-ground-operation to consolidate aspects of the business from storage and shipping to collect on delivery services, with the result that Elabelz has become the pioneering e-commerce force in the region.

The future of Elabelz is bright as Agha is determined to maintain his winning formula, which he sees as delivering a standard of service that people could only imagine previously, and providing a seamless transition from brick-and-mortar locations to e-commerce by utilising rapid and transparent delivery methods.

From identifying a targeted niche in the region, to developing the brand, and expanding internationally, Nooruldeen Agha has proved he is a true entrepreneur in every sense of the word. He continues to point Elabelz in the right direction with further expansion planned in the region and beyond in the near future.